I’m 45 and working on making friends with aging.

On May 11th, it was my birthday – forty-five trips around the sun, as they say. I’d say 45 puts me pretty firmly in middle age. I have many thoughts about my current stage of life, and since it’s my belated “birthday post” (I actually started this post more than a year ago, when I was only 44) I feel entitled to navel-gaze for approximately the whole time. I chunked this post up into manageable-looking pieces using headings, in an effort to be timely. (Ahem. Clearly, timeliness is relative.)

(Side note: my son considers the phrase “chunk it up” to be an affront to humanity. E, if you ever read this blog, too bad, it’s my birthday.)

It was a beautiful week.

To reiterate previous birthday posts, I am so glad that my birthday is when it is. On my birthday morning I was off (one of my half-days) and I took a walk. It was warm and fragrant and everything was blooming and greening and the birds were making a gorgeous racket. Our magnolia was splendid. Since then, it’s only gotten better. There are fruit trees all over the neighbourhood with blossoms as thick as cake frosting, and they smell like heaven, and it’s the BEST. It feels to me like the most hopeful time of year. I wouldn’t trade my date for any other date.

I feel old and also not old.

Something about the term “middle-aged” sounds old. Or somehow frumpy, staid, or uncool. Why is that? I’m not sure what cultural stereotypes are feeding into that, but apparently I don’t feel that they apply to me. I don’t feel “middle-aged” the way I’m imagining it. I’m pretty sure I heard someone on a podcast call it “medium-aged,” which for some reason is way more palatable to me.

There are days when I do feel kinda old, like if I’ve been sitting too much and get up in a creaky way, or when I can’t summon energy for important things. Or when I forget things I should remember, every day of my life. Or the times when I can tell my eyesight is not what it was.

But overall, I feel pretty young. What does that even mean? I guess… that my soul doesn’t feel old. Or finished. My children and my students keep me young by just being their youthful selves. I learn new things every day. I am still changing as a person through the learning. I still have lots of wisdom to collect. Sean and I have lots of plans and things to accomplish. I’m still pretty strong and bendy. And when I’m dancing, I can feel ageless. I am in great used condition.

I am happy to be 45.

My students all know my age. If that seems weird, it’s because I use my own age as an example when I teach them to answer the question “Quel âge as-tu?”. Which is the most natural way to do it. I’ve never been offended when someone asks my age – after all, we ask kids their ages all the time. And I want them to know that I am an example of what forty-five is.

I know it would be easy to fall into the cultural habit of mourning my disappearing youth. I do have those pangs sometimes, but I don’t actually want to be a twentysomething anymore. Or even a thirtysomething. I’m aware that my years are a privilege – and that I can be cool at any age. (And when I say “cool,” I actually mean super-nerdy but fun enough to relate to 6-to-12-year-olds and even make them laugh sometimes. Like many medium-aged teachers I know.)

That said… last year on my birthday, my Grade 4s sang the birthday song to me, including the age chant at the end. Boy, they were counting for a while. I’m just as glad we skipped it this year.

Once upon a time, in the latter half of my thirties, I was talking with a class about age, specifically mine, and I said something like, “It’s been a long time since I was thirty!” And one punky kid I loved said, “But you’d go back if you could, right?” Because that’s what his mom would say. And I thought about it for a moment and said, “Honestly… no. I’m good where I am. I wouldn’t go back.”

That is just as true now, if not more so. Right now, Sean and I are in the sweet spot of parenting, where both kids are quite independent but not yet truly hormonal. We have learned an inestimable amount in these almost-14 years of parenting. I am also a far better teacher than I was ten years ago – or even five. Sean and I are a better team, too, on all levels. We’ve been gathering knowledge and experience this whole time – I would never want to give that up.

And of course, who would ever want to live through this pandemic again?

I have plenty of grey hair – and you can see it.

I decided a while ago (ten years ago, actually) that I would do my best to resist the urge to dye my grey hair, because I want to be proud of it. I want to remember that it represents years of love-giving and baby-growing and problem-solving and child-guiding. Resisting the urge is relatively easy for me, mostly because I’m terrible at making hair appointments with any regularity. And I’m kind of afraid of drugstore DIY hair dye. Also, I don’t want to have to deal with roots. Not to mention that I don’t want to spend the money.

But I can’t deny that I’ve been tempted. Not because I don’t like the grey hair itself – I actually think it has an interesting multi-dimensionality about it – but because I sometimes feel lonely in my mission to age greyciously. (Greysfully?) I remember a friend once telling me that her hairdresser referred to any woman allowing her greying hair to show as “letting herself go”. As though her teeth were falling out or something. Sheesh.

I hope that we’re past that level of anti-aging rhetoric – after all, getting actual grey highlights is a thing now. But in reality, in my neck of the woods, my hair is a relative abnormality. Most of the women I work with and hang out with dye their hair. And it does look great, and youthful… and I get it. If you still feel like a younger self, you want younger hair to match. Under those circumstances, having young-coloured hair feels like a pretty heavy “should.”

Thank goodness for Skye (who has similar hair to mine and an even greater reluctance to make hair appointments) and certain other medium-aged women friends who are also letting their hair just do its thing. Friends, I appreciate you being real (/hair-lazy) with me.

So I’m still holding out, letting inertia help me. I feel like I might someday soon put some pretty rainbow-y colours in some of my grey, just because it would show up awesomely and everybody’s doing it. But I don’t want to cover it all. I have earned it, after all.

I have become a sporadic blogger. Apparently.

You may have noticed that I don’t post very frequently these days. I certainly have noticed, and it doesn’t sit easy with me.

There are two things mostly causing this. One is that, even at this sweet spot of my family’s trajectory, life always feels just a wee bit busier than our family can manage proficiently. Like, we’re doing pretty well, but we’re never getting all the things done. Especially me (I am list-prone so I always know how much I’m leaving undone). I make my deadlines, but I’m never fully sorted out, much less ahead of the game. And there are some things that have been on my To Do list for literally years. (Quite a few of them are blog post ideas, ha.) And it’s rare to have simultaneous brain-energy and time after a school day.

But also… I also find myself wondering lately if mine is a voice that is needed. The perspectives that we need most right now as a species are those that have been marginalized. I am a straight, white, cis woman with a middle-class background, an education, and no disabilities. I am dripping with privilege. Furthermore, there are already billions of humans out there, adding their considered and unconsidered thoughts to the melee. Do people really need to hear from me?

{I’m not fishing, by the way. I sincerely ask myself this on a regular basis.}

Then sometimes I think But ummm Dilovely, you do not have that many readers. The ones who know you personally do sometimes like to hear what you have to say.

And sometimes I think But Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and Pierre Poilièvre and fricking Trump still get to say stuff… Followed by We can’t leave the stage to those dudes. I’d better say stuff too. So it’s an ever-evolving internal struggle.

All of this ends up meaning that I write less often… and that when I do write, I want it to be something that matters, at least a little. Something with a reason for being in the world, other than “I have thoughts and no filter.” Ya know?

In any case, thank you for reading today, and any time you read. It is still thrilling after all this time that real people actually read what I write here.*

I am so thankful.

One more thing I can say about life at medium age: I am more aware than ever of how fortunate I am. This will sound awful, but it’s true: the more years one lives, the higher the odds that something will go terribly wrong. I’m not saying that I live in the shadow of doom – far from it. And I’m not saying I haven’t already suffered, despite my privilege – as we all have.

I guess I look at it this way: every day that I get to keep my loved ones is a gift. Every day that we have our health is a gift. Every day that we have our home, our jobs, food security, peace, stability, and democracy is an incredible confluence of good fortune. As global citizens, constantly deluged with information, we all know that any of those things could change any time – sometimes in a single moment.

I’m 45 and so damn lucky.

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*P.S. Speaking of your readership, if you have ever subscribed to email notifications for this blog and then ceased to receive those notifications, it would mean a lot to me if you tried re-subscribing on the sidebar. There was some kind of mystery glitch. Please know I never meant to forsake you!